Pensacola Young Professionals and the Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce will host a Mayoral Candidate forum on August 10th at 5:30 PM at the Bayview Community Center.
Representatives from each organization will ask questions to the four mayoral candidates with the opportunity for the public to ask questions at the end.
“Our organizations are excited for the opportunity to hear our candidates for mayor discuss the important issues of our city,” said Meg Burke, Executive Director of Pensacola Young Professionals. “This is a great opportunity for undecided voters to hear from our future mayor two weeks before the Primary Election.”
The Bayview Community Center is located at 2001 East Lloyd Street.
All of the candidates say that “Public Safety” is their top priority but other than Sharp who has some good ideas the others won’t be specific. Reeves says that Sheriff Chip Simmons will be his “partner in keeping Pensacola safe.” Is Simmons going to move his office into city hall? If Simmons is at the candidate forum, the organizations should ask him why he is not helping the current mayor to keep the city safe and why he didn’t keep Pensacola safe when he was the Chief of Police. Of the six police chiefs that I have assessed starting with Chief John Mathis, Simmons has the worst crime fighting record to include the city’s per capita crime rate being 61% above the state average during his four full years and even 77% above in 2012. Crime in the city is now 3.6 times worse than Santa Rosa County. Councilmembers know because I have shown them the numbers. Reeves brags about making “data-driven” decisions but does not. Simmons doesn’t even live in our city. Neither did Lyter until he became Chief. He long lived in Santa Rosa County where most PPD officers may live. Alexander was a city resident and he was effective until Hayward dumped him. Christman is not a city resident. The new Police Chief Eric Randall told Myers even before being hired that he would not live in the city and he does not. Maybe we need to amend our city charter to provide for an “elected” Police Chief as is done in some Florida cities. Then the person would have to live in our city. If we want, we could also elect the City Administrator, City Attorney, City Clerk, City Treasurer, Fire Chief, etc.